Woodstove Wonders

We only eat toast if it’s cold outside. It’s kind of sad when it’s July, and I want a piece of toast for breakfast but can’t have one because we don’t have a toaster. Through the winter months, however, I can make perfectly browned bread in a matter of seconds. I simply place a slice of (always homemade) bread directly on the surface of the hot-but-not-roaring woodstove for a short while, standby for flipping, and then viola! Toast.

I love our fireplace. It might be slightly oversized for our tiny house, but it keeps us plenty warm. Henry traded some horseshoeing service for it eight years ago, and it has served us well ever since. One of these days, we’re going to get our act together and build a nice stone mantle, but it just hasn’t happened yet, (so try not to look too hard at the ugly sheetrock/cobwebs).

Not only does our woodstove do its primary job of heating up our living space, it also keeps the old kettle boiling with tea water, simmers soups all night, makes the best toast, and…

…heats up tortillas. We eat a lot of corn tortillas in this household. (In my humble opinion, Mission makes the hands-down best of the cheap Mexican corn tortillas.)

The fan on there is really cool in that it’s heat-powered, so it starts up when the fire is burning, and blows a minimal amount of warm air through to the bedroom. That type of fan is kinda spendy, so I’m not sure if I would recommend getting one, but Lehman’s sells something similar here.

Quesadillas (with Tillamook cheese of course) are pretty much our go-to, in-a-hurry lunch, and a hot stove is the perfect quesadilla-making apparatus.

We simply warm up the tortilla, throw on a slice of cheese, flip as necessary to prevent burning, remove when the cheese is melted, garnish with our favorite quesadilla extras, and eat.

The reality is that sometimes crumbs flake off or a little cheese oozes out on the stovetop and burns up, leaving a greasy spot and extra dust. Maybe if I were a more concerned housekeeper, I would be upset by that, but I just let it go. It’s a small price to pay for perfect toast seven months out of the year.

Love this and can’t wait to have a wood stove to bake on someday soon – hopefully next winter. I always make my toast in a cast iron skillet – bet it tastes very similar (who needs a toaster or a microwave?).